One of the great things about Wandrous is that its navigation functions can be used without a cell phone signal or Internet connection. As long the GPS on your device is enabled, Wandrous trip navigation will work for you -- complete with audio notifications and photo popups.

If you are going on a hike to a new place, set up a trip on Wandrous to guide you. As long as you have GPS coordinates of at least one destination, you can start a guided trip.

Here's how we did it to hike to the Charles Spring in the Lincoln National Forest of New Mexico.

1. Get GPS Coordinates

First, get your GPS coordinates. Online topo maps are the best. We were lucky to find Charles Spring on a topo map of Bluff Springs, New Mexico, and if you click this link you will see the map (scroll down the page to find the Charles Spring coordinates).

2. Create a Trip for the Hike

Next, create a trip in Wandrous for your hike. That's easy:

3. Create a Place

In Wandrous a Place is like a super waypoint. It contains a name, possiby GPS coordinates, possibly an address, and possibly contact info. The most important thing about a Place with GPS coordinates is that it is what is monitored during a guided trip. We'll say that again, another way: if you have a trip, and you want to use it for guiding purposes, it has to have at least one Place with GPS coordinates.

In our hike, we know we have one Place we want to go, and that is Charles Spring. We also have its GPS coordinates, from step 1. So now we just create a Place called "Charles Spring" in our new trip, "Springs Hike":

On the "Add Place" screen we entered a name, and the Latitude and Longitude of the place. There are a lot of cool options, but right now all we want to do is click "Save". Now we have the Charles Spring place on our hike.

Notice that the values entered for Latitude and Longitude are taken directly from the online topo map BUT the Longitude is preceded by a minus sign. That's very important, because it indicates degrees WEST (of that place in England that is the 0 degree reference point). The topo map designation is W105.74095, meaning "west". If you leave off the minus sign you end up half a globe away. 

4. Trip Guiding

After you created Charles Spring, you now have a one-destination trip, with a place that has GPS coordinates, so you can start a guided trip. How do you know that? 

Take a look at the Command Bar at the top of the screen:

Notice the presence of the Start button. Anytime this appears in the Command Bar, the Trip Name displayed in the Command Bar can be started as a guided trip. A guided trip is simply one in which Wandrous monitors every place in the trip. When you get near the place, you receive an audio approach notification. When you get to the place, you receive a notification popup.

So in our case, this means that, if we press the Start button, the Springs Hike trip is being monitored. So as soon as we get near Charles Spring, Wandrous will tell you that you are approaching it. And when you get to it, Wandrous will tell you that you have arrived.

5. Viewing the Trip Places

Tap the Springs Hike name in the Command Bar and you will see this display:

As you know from having looked at other Travel Books and trips in Wandrous, a trip usually has many places, and they have stories, photos, and so forth.

Our Springs Hike trip, though, is brand new, so we have exactly one place on this trip, and we don't have a story for it yet. If we tap this line, we can add a story. But that's for later, once we get there. For now, we want to look at the map. 

6. Viewing the Map

Tap the light blue Map icon in the Command Bar.

So there is Charles Spring, on your Google map. Zoom in and out, turn the satellite view on and off. Enjoy. When you are finished, tap the star and you should see this:

That's right, if you have Google Navigation on your device, you can driving directions to somewhere close to your trailhead. After that you will need to start the Wandrous trip guiding, to be guided towards Charles Spring.

The Edit option lets you go back and change information about the Charles Spring place, such as its GPS coordinates. That will be handy if you get to Charles Spring and find out that the online topo map coordinates were not precise. You can then update them, in real time and space, so that they are more accurate for future travelers.

7. Starting the Trip

Press the Start button in the Command Bar and Wandrous will do two things.

First, it will begin monitoring your GPS location, to tell you when you get near to Charles Spring.

Second, it will place a blue dot onto the map. This shows your current location.

This current location dot works even when you do not have a cell phone connection (as long as you have a GPS signal). So what you will see, once you get onto the trail and off of the cell phone world, is a map that has:

• A blue dot indicating your current position
• A star with the name Charles Spring showing your target destination
• Nothing else on the map (no roads, features, etc)

Your job then becomes moving that blue dot towards Charles Spring. You move the blue dot by hiking -- but you already knew that 

8. Creating a Guided Trip

This is all very interesting, and for the wildly adventurous with time on your hands, having just one waypoint out in the wilderness may be enough to get you off on the trail.

But Wandrous is designed to help people find their way in unusual places, and a single waypoint generally is not enough to hand out to your friends and family. What you will want to do is add places to this trip, places that will talk to hikers as they move along so that they are comfortable in their pursuit of wilderness bliss.

And that, friends, is the subject of another post.